The Charter

Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada from 1968 to 1979 and again from 1980 to 1984, argued that the rights of Canadians should be given special protection by being included or entrenched in the constitution of the country. This was done when the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was made law in 1982. It became the set of rules to which all politicians referred when creating laws and to which all judges referred when deciding what those laws meant.